Marly Youmans

East of the Sun

Late afternoon, our guide suggested one more place to see
   — No fee! All free to you! — and though we were fatigued
      And first demurred, we yielded to his plea…

He gestured to a path that snaked through thickets wild with bees, 
   And though we saw no rose trees, met a scent of rose,
      A sweet intoxication on the breeze.

Just when we wished to wheel and walk away, the trail uncoiled
   To vanish into flowery, unspoiled meadowland
      Around the miracle that bees had toiled

To make, constructing cell by cell an edifice of wax
   And honey—bounty from the pollen-tax on blooms,
      Their gold borne home in bee-leg pollen sacs.

We Westerners, travel-soiled and jaded, encountered there
   A bee cathedral like a prayer shimmering
      Among bee-flights that made a maze in air.

In minster walls gargoyled with corpses of work-martyred bees,
   We saw a shape of ease — intaglio of a man,
      As if someone had slept in sweetness, pleased

A while with honeyed, humming cells, and then had flown away
   And left the scooped-out place he lay to fill with drops…
      As if such sleeps and flights were but child’s play.

Marly Youmans’s newest book is narrative poem Seren of the Wildwood, her latest poetry collection is The Book of the Red King, and her most recent novel is Charis in the World of Wonders. www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.com